It would be rather difficult to try to establish a date on which the first sociological study of social security was presented to the interested public. Even before the middle of the 20th century, people concerned with this institution were writing essays that could easily qualify for this label, although ‘sociology’ is not once mentioned in the text.

The beginning of the art: the quest for understanding

The search for origins becomes incomparably easier if we insist on the term ‘sociology of social security’ appearing in the title of the study. In such case, the obvious forerunner would be the Fourteenth National Congress of Sociology in Mexico, held in November 1963, which was entirely devoted to this theme. Clearly, not all papers presented to the congress could legitimately be considered as contributions to the sociology of social security, but whatever the scientific value of this event, it nevertheless bore witness to an interest in sociology as a new tool for the study of the institution, which, at that time, was among the chief preoccupations of many countries.

The congress also marked the beginning of the subsequent involvement in this field of ISSA, reflecting the widely felt need for an expert analysis of the institution by social scientists, in addition to that of lawyers, actuaries and statisticians. Sociology was not the only discipline to appear on the scene – with the growing importance of social security schemes in the national economy, it was natural that economists, interested in the operations and the impact of the institution, began to enter this area of study. In reaction to the general call for taking a measure of the economic dimension of the institution, the relationship between social security and national economy became one of the central themes of the International Conference of Social Security Actuaries and Statisticians, held in 1966 in Paris.

In the same year, ISSA took the initiative to bring an item dealing with sociological studies of social security to the agenda of the VIth World Congress of Sociology held in Evian (France). In collaboration with the International Sociological Association (ISA), a Round Table Meeting on the Sociology of Social Security was convened within the programme of the congress to review the state of research in different countries and to map the essential issues regarding the objectives and the strategy of research in this field.